‘Steve Jobs’ Trailer: Michael Fassbender Invents the Future

All right, so Steve Jobs has nothing to do with Jobs, the Ashton Kutcher biopic about late Apple cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs — except for the fact that they’re both about the same person. The twist, supposedly, for this new Jobs biopic, which is directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin, is that the whole film is set at and around three different Apple product launches. (Kutcher’s version featured a more traditional biopic structure).

The other big draw here is the cast: Seth Rogen, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, and Michael Fassbender as the man himself, Steve Jobs. Only Fassbender looks nothing like Steve Jobs, and at least based on the snippets of dialogue heard in this trailer, he doesn’t sound like him either. Other than that, I’m sure he’s absolutely perfect for the part.

I’ve got a great deal of affection for all the people I’ve mentioned in the previous two paragraphs, but this first teaser honestly feels like it’s testing that affection. Maybe he’ll fit better into the movie itself, but Fassbender seems woefully miscast (at various points in the film’s development, Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio were both slated to play Jobs). Along with the various castings and re-castings, the movie has already gone through one previous director (David Fincher, who wanted to make the movie with Bale) and one previous distributor (Sony, who dropped out around the time Fassbender replaced DiCaprio).

In sum, iWorried. But perhaps the film will mirror its subject, and after great tumult and near catastrophe, all involved will deliver a product that changes the world forever. That’d be nice (if unlikely). Steve Jobs opens in theaters on October 9.